Mildred Pierced (25 page)

Fifteen minutes later, I was back at my office in the Farraday with my briefcase and the Buntline of the late Mr. Plaut inside it. The hour was late, but not so late the building didn’t ring, rattle, and hum with voices and some things that might have been music.

There wasn’t much to do except sit at my desk and wait for the phone to ring, hoping it was Shelly or whoever had survived of the Survivors and now had him. I also planned to call Mrs. Plaut’s every hour to see if I got a call there.

Violet wasn’t in. There was no reason for her to be. The lights were off. I unlocked the door and made my way to my office, turned on the light and checked the spindle on which Violet usually left me messages. The spindle was empty. I started to put both hands behind my head and got a sharp reminder of my still-sore shoulder and arm.

I sat and thought of what I might do next. Nothing came. After about twenty minutes of reading old mail, tearing it up, and dropping it in my wastebasket, I heard someone in the outer office. I looked up and Jeremy Butler filled the doorway.

“I saw your lights,” he said. “Anything about Sheldon?”

“Not yet. Have a seat.”

Jeremy sat.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked.

“Not unless you tell me how to find James Fenimore Sax,” I said.

“J. F. Sax,” Jeremy repeated. “I can do that.”

I think I took about ten seconds before I spoke and when I did it was slow and cautious.

“You can tell me where to find a J. F. Sax?”

“Yes,” he said. “I believe the whole name is James Fenimore Sax.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Two doors down. Professor Geiger’s real name is James Fenimore Sax. He calls himself ‘Professor Geiger,’ but he signs his rent checks J. F. Sax or, if I remember correctly, when he first moved in, he signed them ‘James Fenimore Sax.’ Yes, I think I mentioned his name to him and told him of my fondness for some of James Fenimore Cooper’s.…”

I was standing up and reaching for my briefcase.

“Come on,” I said, hurrying around my desk and going to the door.

Jeremy rose and followed me.

“Is Geiger in?” I asked as we stepped through the outer door of Shelly’s office.

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said. “I haven’t heard that odd somewhat haunting music from his Aeolian trafingle today.”

“Martha Helter heard music on the phone,” I said aloud, though I was talking to myself. “Funny music.”

“Martha Helter?”

“Professor Geiger has Shelly,” I said, walking down the hall with Jeremy at my side.

“Why?” Jeremy asked.

“Let’s ask him.” I tried the door to Geiger’s office.

It was locked. There were no lights on inside.

“Do you know where he lives?” I asked Jeremy.

“Yes,” he said. “I have his address upstairs in the office.”

I had choices. I could bring Jeremy with me. I could call my brother. I could call Cawelti. I could even call Sax. Jeremy had given me his number. I didn’t call anyone. I explained everything to Jeremy and told him what I was going to do. He wanted to come with me. I told him it would probably be better if no one was with me when I approached the house, and I asked him to call the police if he didn’t hear from me in two hours.

He agreed reluctantly.

I don’t know the real reason I wanted to go alone. It just felt like the right thing to do. Besides, I had the mister’s Buntline in my briefcase.

The house was on Herbert Street just off Washington, a modest one-story stucco. Neat little front yard with an orange tree and a pair of palms about fifteen feet tall. The house looked pretty much like the other houses on the block.

I parked right in front. There were no people on the sidewalk and only a few cars in the driveways. If Sax was at the window, he would see me coming. What he wouldn’t see was the Buntline I pulled out of the briefcase when I was right in front of the door. I placed the briefcase on the welcome mat and rang the bell.

James Fenimore Sax, alias Professor Alan Geiger, answered the door. In dark trousers and an open-necked white shirt with his Larry Fine hair brushed flat, he looked at me and the long revolver and stepped back to let me in.

“I gather you know,” he said.

“Most of it,” I said, walking in, gun pointing around the hallway and into the open living room where an Aeolian trafingle stood in the middle of the room among a clutter of furniture. The walls were racked with weapons: knives, bows, small guns, large rifles, even something that looked like a sling. In the middle of one wall was a large picture of Mark Twain. Twain had a target ring around his face. There were holes in the ring.

Sax saw me looking.

“Twain wrote a very spiteful and vindictive essay on James Fenimore Cooper,” Sax said, walking ahead of me. “It ultimately ruined Cooper’s critical reputation.”

“Un-American,” I said. “Where’s Shelly?”

“In the other room, handcuffed to a metal bed,” he said. “I’m glad you came. Shall we sit?”

“No, get Shelly,” I said.

“Sorry. Sheldon tells me where he hid that will, and then we negotiate.”

He removed three books from a chair and sat, crossing his knees and folding his hands.

“I’m the one with the big gun,” I said.

“And I’m the one who has Joan Crawford.”

“You do?”

“One of my men picked her up at Warner Brothers a few hours ago. I’m expecting a call from him any moment to ask me what to do with her. What should I have him do with her, Mr. Peters?”

He was smiling, picturing me, Shelly, and probably Joan Crawford dead.

“Shoot her dead.”

He stopped smiling.

“Get Shelly,” I repeated. “Anthony is dead. A cop shot him. Crawford is home.”

“Bluff,” said Sax. “If I don’t answer the phone when Anthony—”

“He’s dead,” I repeated. “Shot full of holes. You’ve got to listen more carefully.”

I could tell that he was beginning to believe me by the way his eyes went back and forth as if he were searching for a plan, the right line, a good idea.

“Get Shelly,” I said.

“You won’t kill me.”

“Probably not, but I’m all for making a hole in your knee,” I said. “I mean,
if
I shoot straight. I’m warning you. I don’t shoot straight, and I have no idea what kind of damage a Buntline Special can do.”

“We can deal,” he said, nervous now.

“With what?”

“Minck
did
kill his wife,” he said. “Hawkeye Anthony and I were in the bushes along the path in Lincoln Park. It went down all wrong. I had made a deal with Mildred Minck, given her the gun.”

“You knew about the no-snore offer,” I said.

“When Minck had joined the Survivors, he told me about the device and his patent. Among other things, I had Anthony check on it and discovered that the firm in Des Moines was interested. I called them pretending to represent Sheldon and found that they indeed were going to make a substantial offer.”

“So you went to Mildred.”

“I persuaded her to come to the park, told her where her husband would be. It shouldn’t have been a problem. She could just shoot him and walk away a rich woman. I told her to be sure no one was watching when she did it.”

“You were going to blackmail Mildred,” I said.

“We had a camera,” said Sax. “Anthony is …
was
very good with a camera.”

“But Joan Crawford showed up,” I said.

“Mildred was just pulling out her gun when Sheldon fired,” said Sax. “Complete accident. Dumb luck. He had no idea he had shot her seconds before she was going to kill him. We didn’t know what Crawford had seen. Anthony was going to go after Crawford, but he was too late. And then the kid came on the bicycle.”

I waited while he paused and sighed.

“I improvised,” he said. “Planted the second bolt after we saw the boy take the gun and the money. I wanted to suggest that Sheldon had missed the target and someone else had fired the bolt that killed Mildred. Actually, when we had left the scene, I decided that the mistake might be a good thing. Mildred’s money would go to Sheldon, providing he wasn’t convicted of killing her. Then, if I could get him out of jail and he had an accident, both of their considerable estates would go to me.”

“So you could do a lot better than just blackmail Mildred,” I said. “Life on a tropical island after the war.”

“No,” Sax said. “You’ve misjudged me. I believe in the Survivors.”

“Which is why you get them killed?”

“I believe in them in a greater sense. Survival of the best, the committed. With money I can recruit more, grow, teach the frontier skills put forward, though not always with perfect accuracy, I admit, by my namesake.”

“With you in charge,” I said.

“I’m the founder. I’m James Fenimore, the creator of the movement.”

“Creator?” I said. “A little god?”

“No.”

“Okay, a Schickelgruber.”

“Hitler’s a monster,” he said indignantly. “I’m a savior. There have to be sacrifices for the greater good.”

“Open the door and get Shelly.”

“I’ll testify against him,” Sax warned. “I’ll confirm Crawford’s story, say I had just arrived in time to see him shoot down the innocent woman who was almost certainly coming to reconcile with him.”

I shot at the wall. The Buntline kicked me back about two feet. My left shoulder blazed with pain. The sound was an explosion, and I heard Shelly yelp from behind the thick, closed door to my left.

Sax was covering his head with both hands.

“I was aiming at you,” I said, re-centering the Buntline at him. I should have been holding it in both hands, but my left arm had no intention of cooperating.

“You’re crazy,” Sax cried.

“Probably,” I said. “I’ve had a bad week.”

Sax got up and hurried to the closed door. He opened it with a key and I followed him in. Shelly, face puffed and purple, eyes almost closed, shirt bloody, sat on the floor chained to a metal bedpost.

“Toby,” he said through swollen lips.

I think he tried to smile.

“The cuffs,” I said to Sax, who moved to the bed and took the cuffs off Shelly, who said, “You got a cigar?”

“I’ll get you one.” Then to Sax: “Help him up.”

Sax helped Shelly to his feet. Shelly wobbled unsteadily.

“Look what they did to you and you didn’t talk, Shel,” I said. “I’m proud of you.”

“
Couldn’t
talk,” Shelly said.

“Why?”

“Didn’t write that will,” he said. “He’d kill me if I told him.”

Sax’s mouth dropped open. “I could have simply killed you.”

Shelly did something that I think might have been a smile. Then he hauled back with his right hand and landed a nose-breaking punch in the middle of Sax’s face.

“Survive that,” Shelly said.

F
OUR DAYS LATER,
Professor Geiger’s office was cleared out. Everything, including the Aeolian trafingle, was put in boxes and stored by Jeremy in a shed in the catacombs of the Farraday Building. There wasn’t much chance that James Fenimore Sax was ever going to claim them, but Jeremy was taking no chances.

Sax made a deal with the district attorney. He signed a statement saying that he had been responsible for Mildred’s going to the park to kill Shelly. The statement also said that he was positive Shelly had shot his wife accidentally.

In exchange, Sax was allowed to plead as an accessory to conspiracy to commit murder and to kidnapping. Anthony, he said, had planted the bomb that killed Lewis and sent Martha Helter to the hospital. Sax insisted it wasn’t his idea to kill anyone but Shelly, and Shelly hadn’t been killed. There would be no trial, no need for Joan Crawford’s testimony. Sax would serve a minimum of twenty years without possibility of parole. Quick calculation made him close to eighty when he’d be eligible to get out.

It was early morning, before the tenants had begun climbing the stairs and moving slowly up the elevator to their offices.

Phil, Violet, Shelly and I stood outside the door and watched Jeremy scrape away the words “Professor Alan Geiger, Center for the Aeolian Trafingle” and carefully paint in plain black letters, “Pevsner and Peters, Confidential Investigations.”

Shelly looked as if he were about to cry. He touched his face with the cast on his right hand. He had broken his fist with his right hook to Sax’s face.

“We’re only two doors down, Shel,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s … it’s different,” he said.

“Shelly, you’re a rich man now. You should be happy. You can buy all the latest dentist stuff,” I said. “You don’t even have to work if you don’t want to.”

“It’s my calling,” Shelly said.

Violet held his arm. Phil said nothing, just watched.

When he had finished the lettering, Jeremy opened the door and handed a key to me and another one to Phil. I could smell the fresh paint on the white walls. The office was a single room, no little reception/waiting area. The office was as big as Shelly’s chamber. There was a closet on the wall to the left. Jeremy had gone into his trove of furniture and come up with two heavy dark wooden desks with almost-matching wooden swivel chairs behind them. There were two chairs in front of each desk and a phone on each. There was also a round wood table to the left with four chairs around it. On the table was a large vase full of flowers, big ones, red, yellow, pink, purple, with an envelope propped against the vase.

“That one’s mine,” said Phil, nodding at the desk to our right.

“Fine,” I said moving to the table, picking up the envelope and opening it. There was a check inside for three hundred dollars signed by Joan Crawford. There was also a handwritten note:

Good luck and sincere thanks. Should
Mildred Pierce
prove as successful for my career as I pray it will, it will, in no small way, be due to your efforts.

J.C.

I put the note back in the envelope with the check. Later we would open an account at the bank for Pevsner and Peters with the three hundred dollars from me and the same amount from Phil.